Under the UK leadership of James Tuckey, the former boss of MEPC, the company is planning to launch a continental European property fund, aimed at Australian private and institutional investors, which could be worth up to €500 million (£337 million).

The new fund would be opportunity-driven, and is likely to invest in countries such as Germany and France and in Scandinavia. Multiplex believes that a continental European property fund would be more attractive to Australian investors than a UK fund because there is better arbitrage between the Australian dollar and the euro than between the Australian dollar and sterling. Rental returns in many parts of continental Europe are also higher.

Mr Tuckey said that the plans were still at an early stage, describing them as “work in progress”, but he admitted that Multiplex already has a legal team working on details.

In the UK, Multiplex is mulling over the launch of a £200 million fund targeted at institutional investors. Some of the company’s existing developments, including a shopping centre in High Wycombe, are likely to be injected into the fund.

Multiplex already has a large property fund management business, called Multiplex Capital, in Australia and New Zealand.

Meanwhile, it has emerged that Multiplex has received a profit of about £20 million after its Australian rival Westfield agreed to buy out its interest in the £670 million construction contract to build the White City project in West London, the UK’s most expensive shopping centre development.

Westfield has made a series of design changes to the scheme, which had been expected to trigger a legal battle with Multiplex over the cost of the changes. The sale of the construction contract removes that distraction. The centre will not be ready until autumn 2008, several months behind schedule. Westfield has blamed Multiplex, which in turn blames Westfield’s design changes for the delays.

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